I’ve driven from Denver to Vegas several times and the speed limits are 75 to 80 most of the way and it’s glorious. It never feels that unsafe either.
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I don’t think this is a uniquely American problem. Seems the same in Canada as mentioned. To be fair my Europe driving experience is zero so not sure about there.
I am not an expert or anything but I would guess that most of the excess road death in America is not caused by more speed
Also setting a good speed limit is not a trivial issue. In theory you could start strictly enforcing the ones you have. It wouldn’t even be unsafe if you actually got everyone to mostly slow down, which I imagine would happen if you just started randomly pulling over anyone who is over at all. That would be extremely unpopular and mostly pointless though
Yeah, going really fast doesn’t feel unsafe as long as there is no conflict with other drivers. If you drive on an open highway and barely have to change lanes you can zip along at 70 mph without even really feeling like you’re going fast - especially in a desert surrounding where there are few reference points like trees nearby. This can be a little bit dangerous because if something unexpected does happen like a tire blow out, the speed does become dangerous in and of itself.
On the other hand if you are driving 55 mph in a crowded interstate and you have are constantly changing lanes and dealing with tailgaters and sudden slow downs in congested spots, etc., then 55 feels fast.
With no evidence to back it up, my guess is that the biggest danger on the road now is distracted driving, mainly in the form of cell phone use. Higher speeds exacerbate that danger. Eliminate distracted driving and speed becomes much less of an issue. Someone going 70 while texting is a far greater danger to everyone on the road around them than someone going 75 and paying attention to the road.
Limited experience in Germany but when a car passes you at 200km/h+ it’s a different feeling. You can hear/feel it before you see it past you in the distance.
If you get in the left lane, you better mean business. No taking a minute to pass someone.
I drove on an autobahn highway without realizing it at first until I noticed how fast cars were going and had my passenger look up what A3 meant on wikipedia. Was pretty tired so I went 150-170 to wake up and it worked. Also keeping me awake was having to check my rear view mirrors for the cars going 180-230 so I could get out of the left lane asap.
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Speed limits need to basically be appropriate for the least safe cars on the road (e.g. guys in a 25 year old beater with balding tires and semi trucks) I know if some places they have differing speed limits for semis and cars, but I think if that difference gets to more than 10 mph it is also causing more safety issues.
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I’m going 1000 mph on my FSD couch right now. Or maybe it’s 66,000 mph. I can’t decide.
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I agree that distracted driving is probably the biggest danger right now. Speeding isn’t terribly dangerous on it’s own but a habit of speeding will cause people to do things that are very dangerous, i.e. speeding leads to tailgating and passing on the right and suddenly changing lanes without warning to avoid a collision. Speeding on an open road most just endangers the speeder, but speeding on a shared road with lots of other cars endangers others because you will inevitably come into conflict with other cars.
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Jim Abbott can’t be happy about this!
Everyone goes 80 bumper to bumper in LA. Not exaggerating.
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I find LA drivers to be tame/competent compared with Atlanta.
Atlanta 2020/2021 driving was the wild west. Brazen stunt driving going down all over the city, shutting down interstates and bridges, etc. I saw multiple police chases in person that year alone. I saw two people racing doing 70 down an extra-wide left turn lane on Northside Drive with full traffic on both sides of the street–broad daylight.
Apparently vacationing to Atlanta for the purpose of stunt driving become a thing for a hot minute. Driving was legit terrifying.
I haven’t driven in Atlanta, but driving issues have escalated considerably in LA since around the same timeframe. It is absolutely bonkers out there.
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Yes it is. Speed limits aren’t about preventing crashes. They are about keeping you alive if you do crash. None of you can correctly judge if you’ll survive spinning out at 80 mph.
I’ve been a handful of times since the pandemic, but not enough to get a complete sense of current LA.
Atlanta has calmed down a ton though, basically to normal. But still that’s motorcycles doing 100 in full traffic, people changing four lanes at a time, etc.
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Yes I understand that.
Yeah, this. A 55mph national speed limit would save so many lives it’s ridiculous. There would literally be hundreds of thousands more people living in the USA today if we had enforced it rather than repealing it in the 1990s.
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Speed limits should be lower in cities as well, but car dependency is a massive headwind. Cities have been prioritizing car throughput over lives forever